NOT very long ago, it was in a small locality in Hyderabad’s Old City where I lived for less than a year and where I learned the lessons of communal harmony for life.
Old City is one of the historical regions of this south Indian metropolis.
In that locality, Muslim houses were flanked by those of Hindus and vice versa. Their mutual coexistence was on display year round. On Diwali, our Hindu neighbors would visit us with a box of sweets and other traditional food to make us part of their happiness. Dozens of neighborhood children in the locality, irrespective of their religious backgrounds, would assemble to burst firecrackers in front of our house.
Muslim households, in turn, on both the Eid festivities, distributed biryani and sweets to their Hindu neighbors, who generously greeted them. On Christmas, children pooled money to buy a cake. On India’s Independence and Republic Days, the children would go around collecting money from the elders of the locality to organize a National Day themed show that would be staged in a small ground nearby. Children dressed as great freedom fighters, such as Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Abul Kalam, best exemplified the idea of a secular India implying equality of all religions, religious tolerance and respect.
The show put on entirely by the children attracted officials from a nearby police station, and as chief guests, they would hoist the flag and be served refreshments bought with the collected funds. Those children probably knew their country only from the utopian ideas of India expressed in their social studies textbooks.
Moreover, we as Muslims know all too well that concepts such as of religious tolerance and respect are strongly imbibed in Islam, a peace-loving religion. Peace can never prevail in a society that is not tolerant of its differences.
Today, these children are ambitious and passionate teenagers. Like Mohammed Aijaz Ahmed. The youngest fatality in the horrific bombing that took place last Thursday in one of Hyderabad’s busiest shopping districts.
Seventeen-year-old Ahmed died on the spot as two powerful Improvised Explosive Devices exploded at a bus stop and a cinema in the crowded neighborhood of Dilsukh Nagar, about 6 km from Old City. Like he did every day, Ahmed, a first-year engineering student, was at the bus stop to catch a bus to reach home in Amberpet, 3 km from the blast spot.
His father, Iqbal Ahmed, fainted every time he saw his son’s body. His only question was: “Why was his son, an innocent bystander at the bus stop, killed?”
Ahmed, who was pursuing higher education, was one of 16 people killed in the blasts last week.
On Saturday, police raided Muslim houses and questioned Muslim youths as soon as they formed a Special Investigation Team to probe the blasts, according to various reports.
Indeed, what followed immediately after the Thursday’s terror attack was the launch of a media trial, with national and regional press dangerously jumping the gun by pointing at Muslim youths from the Old City as perpetrators of the heinous terror act.
Telugu channel Sri Ram, owned by Hindu Vahini, the sister organization of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took the lead, by pointing toward “terrorists from Old City” attacking to avenge the recent hanging of Indian Muslim Afzal Guru, who was convicted of the 2001 Parliament attack.
Other popular Telugu channels in the state of Andhra Pradesh, Tv9 and Tv5, quoted unnamed sources as claiming a terrorist organization with logistic support from “old Hyderabad terror sleeper cells” carried out the bombings.
Civil rights activists in the city cautioned against blaming Muslim youths without a shred of evidence, exposing a dangerous mindset of the police in the state.
“Our committee feels that immediately after the completion of media trial now, Muslim youths are the target of police. Police investigation of bomb blast is diverted and concentrated only on Muslim youths. The main reason for this is pressure from the media channels that are questioning whether any arrests have been made or not,” said Lateef Mohammed Khan, general secretary, Civil Liberties Monitoring Committee in Hyderabad.
A deep sense of mistrust prevails in the Old City. Many are perhaps reminded of about 100 Muslim youths being rounded up and taken into custody by police from the Old City after the 2007 serial bombings in Mecca Masjid, Lumbini Park and Gokul Chat, the first a mosque in the Old City and the latter two a popular recreation spot and a restaurant, respectively.
A fact-finding report of the AP State Minority Commission in 2007 detailed the third degree torture the Muslim youths were subjected to by the police in the guise of fighting terrorism.
As is the case usually, the report was swept under the carpet to avoid embarrassment to the government, leaving Muslim bodies to petition the central and state authorities, demanding action on the report.
The youths were later acquitted by the courts with a compensation of Rs 300, 000, and with a stigma of being associated with a terror act that they must deal with for the rest of their lives.
My young neighbors in the Old City, who have been brought up in an atmosphere of peace and communal harmony, must be perplexed now. It must be hard for some of them to fathom why whenever a terror act happens in their city they are suddenly in the spotlight. The idea of a secular and just India in their theory textbooks have long been forgotten and replaced by conspiracy theories against a group, a religion, a minority. If these youths don’t represent that disappearing idea of India, I don’t know who would.
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Afifa Jabeen Quraishi
